Many illumination devices or light devices exist for use in dental and oral applications. One specific category of dental illumination devices is directed to hand-held devices that are held in proximity to the mouth of the patient to illuminate an area within the patient's mouth for various reasons. One particular usage is directed to curing light-curable compounds in the mouth. While suitable hand-held light devices exist for dental applications, there are often various drawbacks associated with such light devices, particularly with respect to dental curing lights.
Many such dental lights have a body, which contains the light elements, such as light-emitting diodes (LED). A tapered and curved light guide, then interfaces with the end of the body and the light-emitting elements to capture the light and direct it where desired. Generally, such light guides are bundles of fiber-optic elements, which operate to capture the light in the device, away from the patient's mouth, and then forward that light to a tip that may be placed at the area of interest within a patient's mouth. While such light guides operate in a suitable manner, they are also very inefficient. Almost half of the light generated in the device is lost in the transmission from its source down to the tip, through the light guide. Such inefficiency requires a significantly large light engine to generate the light needed at the curing site, such as for curing a compound. In turn, heat is generated, which must be properly removed and directed away from the light engine. The greater the output required by the light engine, the more heat that must be addressed.
Another issue associated with such dental lights is their sterilization. As may be appreciated, the tip of the dental light is generally brought into proximity or into actual contact with the mouth of the patient or some portion of the mouth. Thus, the tip of the light device is exposed to various germs and bacteria. Accordingly, in order to prevent the propagation of germs or infection between patients, dental instruments are often sterilized, such as by being autoclaved at a very high temperature. While suggestions and some attempts have been made in the art to move the light engine of a dental light closer to the operating tip, such attempts have not thoroughly addressed the issue of sterilization. For example, the temperature at which autoclaving is achieved is potentially damaging to a light engine, such as the light-emitting elements in an LED array. Accordingly, the issue of sterilization has not been adequately addressed by existing dental lights, such as dental curing lights.
Another drawback to existing dental lights is directed to their need for a power source. Often times, such lights are actually plugged into a base that then couples to an AC source, such as a wall outlet. Some are connected directly to an AC wall outlet. Some portable dental light devices are not attached to a base, but rather utilize batteries, such as rechargeable batteries. However, rechargeable batteries require a significant amount of time to charge, and thus, there may be some valuable down time required for the dental light, when it might otherwise be put to use. Furthermore, existing battery charging technology uses batteries that are subject to a somewhat limited number of charge cycles. Their continued ability to take and maintain a charge is reduced over time and usage. After a somewhat limited number of cycles, the batteries have to be replaced. Thus, there is still a need to address power issues in portable curing lights.
As such, various drawbacks remain in the field of dental lights, particularly dental curing lights, which are not addressed by the current art.